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Strategies & Market Trends : Gorilla and King Portfolio Candidates -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Stock Farmer who wrote (47762)	10/10/2001 5:06:30 PM
From: Thomas Mercer-Hursh	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 54805

4. Some of us a lazy. No comment One of my favorite bits from about 15 years back was listening to a talk show about money which on that particular day was featuring some English fellow whose special expertise had something to do with mutual funds. The moderator was trying to push him to make statements in the direction of trading criteria, i.e., how to decide about moving from fund to fund in the same way that one might own individual securities. The fellow finally said something to the effect of, "well, my inclination, being British, is to be rather phlegmatic". He went on to explain that his philosophy was to research his picks thoroughly, commit the funds, and then believe in the quality of his choices and not try to second guess his research every other day. In particular, he believed in being comfortable about being able to go off on vacation and not panic at what the market was doing day by day while gone. a certain madness of crowds effect and it is quite likely that our Gorillas will be bid up to overvaluedness far more than much more mundane stocks. True gorillas, being rare, are a tiny minority of the stocks likely to suffer from momentum madness so, while gorillas may be more volatile than the average stock, I think their volatility is not as problematic as a pure story momo stock. By far. I find it strange that this logic is used at all, because it applies equally to the purchase price as well as the sale price. Profit being merely the difference between the two. Yes, but if one practices LTB&H, there is only one purchase decision and one sell decision, they are far apart in time, and based primarily on changes in the technology or market, not the price. Whereas, if one tries to move in and out to maximize profit and minimize loss, one has to make the decision many times [, possibly with predictable tax loss,] and one has to make that decision on factors that do not relate to the underlying technology. IMHO, there must be a piece of toolkit missing for next time. If we really had that toolkit available now, I would sign up today. Not having found it yet, the question is what one does until it is found.